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Karim Spring

Karim Spring

The hidden systems shaping our world — from geopolitics and artificial intelligence to nature and technological history.

Karim Spring writes about the hidden systems that shape our lives: technology, history, geopolitics and the natural world. Each book takes something familiar and looks at it again, slowly, until its structure becomes visible — how artificial intelligence is quietly reworking ordinary life, why the global order is being rebuilt, what our institutions really stand on, why travel had to be invented, and what water has always been doing for us.

The books are written in English, with French editions in preparation. New work appears first on Substack, where readers can follow each book chapter by chapter.

What connects the books, essays and series is one habit: looking at something familiar until its structure becomes visible — the systems, relationships and agreements that usually go unnoticed until something changes.

The booksAll books
Where to startAll essays
  1. The Agent Becomes the BankA bank used to be a place where humans evaluated risk, approved loans, moved money and managed a balance sheet. Now imagine that AI performs all of those functions. It scores the borrower, prices the loan, allocates the capital, executes the payment, monitors repayment and manages liquidity. At what point is AI no longer simply working for the bank? At what point has the bank become software?17 min read
  2. The Limits of ForesightImagine opening a newspaper in 1925 and seeing this headline: “Quantum Mechanics Is About to Reorganize Civilization. What Will This Do to Us?” The writer would have been spectacularly right. And probably wrong about almost everything that followed. They could perhaps imagine new machines and communications. But Instagram? Smartphones? Google Maps? TikTok? Generative AI? We may now be writing the same article about AI. Perhaps recognizing a technological revolution is much easier than predicting the civilization it eventually creates.20 min read
  3. When the Waltz Travelled EastA waltz begins in Vienna. Then it travels east. Along the way, the question changes. Not: which waltz is better? But: What happened to the waltz when it travelled east? The next piece is built around listening as much as reading. Read a little. Leave to listen. Come back when you want. The pauses are part of it.12 min read

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